I tried installing the vlnvidia module. If I untar it, it unzips to install sbin and usr folders on my desktop.open a terminal in install folder, sh doinst.sh does nothing. Am I missing something?

Yes. That is not how it works. After you install the vlnvidia package (using the package manager), reboot to TUI, log in as root and run "vxconf". Select the nvidia driver when given the option. You need the kernel sources installed as well.

Alternative method (my fav .. again, you need the kernel sources); Boot to TUI, run in as root. Download the latest nV driver file, make it executable, and run it:

Granny we'll agree to disagree. I actually use the compiz cube interace to keep all my most used apps open at all times. After you get used to this, its really hard to go back to flatworld.

I tried installing the vlnvidia module. If I untar it, it unzips to install sbin and usr folders on my desktop.

open a terminal in install folder, sh doinst.sh does nothing. Am I missing something?

I don't think I ever installed vlnvidia module. I have no idea what it does. If nobody can help you, I suppose you could try to copy whatever is in /sbin on the desktop into /sbin on the system and /usr on the desktop into the system /usr. Can you read the script as a text file? If so, go through the steps manually.

If you're trying to install a VL6 video driver file into VL7, you might be running into incompatibilities. That's the problem with ATI drivers and older cards. The drivers don't work with the current xorg and kernel and I'm not aware of any way around this. This is a pure guess, however.

Did you try downloading the proper driver for your video card from NVidia? If I recall correctly, it was a binary file that was easy to run and install.

As for compiz, you don't have to justify liking it. If you like it, you like it and it's your choice. I can't say I can see how the cube is any easier than a plain pager for keeping track of all your open apps--or even better, a center click on the desktop. I keep a sliver margin on the right edge of my screen so that I can always click on the desktop easily without having to minimize anything. It's not glamorous at all but sure is efficient. In fact, I remove the pager from the Panel because it's unnecessary and just takes up space because I get the same function from a center click.

I do hope you get your desired graphics driver installed. Sorry I can't help with that.--GrannyGeek

Just finished a clean install. Trying the previous method given, which is to download the proper driver script, go to init 2 and run nvidia install. I setup my initial install to use default vesa xorg.conf so I see no reason why that should not work this time...

vlnvidia package, I don't understand how to install it. If I untar it and try to run the install script doinst.sh nothing happens. Your saying install it with the package manager? Do you mean gslapt? Look on the sources list this location is not there. I can't install it from glslapt, so how to install it manually from the downloaded file?

Now the installer won't even start. I think I give up. I have two borked hard drives (probably fixable with gparted booted from cd) but still.

On one hard drive, which the bios sees, the fdisk utility does not see. On the other drive, the installed crashes and reboots while finding the install media. Tried twice with both, can't even do a clean install again at this point... Unless I want to try another hard drive.

This adventure may not prove me right, or the decision to not include the proper drivers in initial install, but I find myself asking if I had so much problems trying to get this working, a user with less experience has no hope of getting this working unless he gets lucky with another video card.

Geoforce 6200 is very common nvidia 512 meg card. You really should not have to pull your hair out trying ten different things for 2 days and do 10 clean installs trying 10 more things to get the nvidia drivers working. These used to work right out of the box with vl6. Taking them out of the initial install is a completely bad idea. In vl6, you ran the install, the drivers installed and worked out of the box.

I'm a farily experienced linux user. I couldn't get this working. No regular user would put two days and try all these things, they would simply move on to the next disto that included proper drivers. You can all persist in your belief that leaving these drivers out of the initial install is a great idea, but I disagree, and I have just had the perfect experience to prove why.

Steven, that is a real bummer. Still, the nvidia driver plus kernel sources add up to 75MB or so. That's more than 10% of a CD. Adding the ATI drivers would make it even more. I hope you find a satisfactory solution somewhere, and soon.

I wonder why xubuntu works out of the box and its a cd install too then. Compiz has missing title bar/window decoration problem but I didn't try very hard to fix that when I test installed it. That problem existed in vl6 too but was easy to fix as I recall.

Xubuntu, like most non-Slackware distros, does not include the developer libraries needed to compile many programs. VectorLinux comes with just about everything you need to compile from source. VL7 comes with Fluxbox, too. That's all I can say, since I don't know what programs are included in Xubuntu.--GrannyGeek

We were tossing ideas around on the forum about your situation. None of has had a nvidia do a reboot on us except for oMasta. In his situation it was bad ram or the lack of ram and was corrected when he added some new sticks of a larger size.If you hava a rescue cd (there are plenty on distrowatch) maybe you can run a mem test.http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=systemrescue

I don't think its a ram issue, the ram works fine in windows install, and worked fine in vl6. I don't have any spare ram to check that out. Maybe I'll get some just to be sure, either that or I'm going to find a whole other computer to try this on.

Right now I have work to do, especially graphics and since I use my linux box for all that stuff, I have people waiting for finished work with nothing done right now. I'll have to do my work in windows gimp and other editors for the time being and get back to this nightmare once I catch up on my work. hata_ph I posted my full specs and lspci dump before.